Table of contents for Issue 38 in iPad User Magazine

One of the great things about the iPad is that it’s a computer that needs a minimal amount of maintenance. It rarely crashes, drivers don’t conflict, updates don’t cause your speakers to mysteriously stop working… it’s a less stressful device. But it’s still a computer, running complex code on elaborate hardware, and sometimes things go wrong. That’s why we’ve got guides to helping you solve problems in this issue – from troubleshooting common difficulties, to getting support quickly and easily from Apple directly with the excellent Apple Support app. And when things are going smoothly, we’ve got some great tutorials to help you… get things going even more smoothly, actually! We’ve got one guide to using the easy free mind mapping app Mindly to help put together thoughts and projects…

IT WILL TAKE 20 minutes YOU WILL LEARN How to access the Alchemy synth and adjust its sound YOU’LL NEED GarageBand 2.2, iOS 10.3 or later, and an iPhone 6, iPad Pro, iPad Air 2, iPad mini 4 or newer Back in 2015, music fans will have heard about and wondered why Apple acquired music plugin maker Camel Audio, which made a product called Alchemy. Fast-forward a little and Alchemy has not only been added to Logic Pro X in August 2016, but now GarageBand for iOS, too. GarageBand 2.2 gives you a full mobile version of the software, integrated into Apple’s music creation app as a virtual synth that boasts a wealth of sounds to discover. Though it’s a pro-level tool, featuring an eight-way Transform Pad that can be controlled with gyroscopic motion to…

IT WILL TAKE 15 minutes YOU WILL LEARN How to create, edit and share a mind map YOU’LL NEED Mindly app (free, with optional in-app purchases), iOS 9 or later Mind maps offer an incredibly flexible – and easy – way to keep track of ideas and projects without tying you into a strict workflow or structure. And when it comes to mind-mapping apps, you won’t find simpler or more elegant than Mindly. It’s ridiculously easy to use – simply jot down your thoughts as a series of inter-connected items that can be as basic as a single line or text, or as developed as text, description and icon, complete with web link or attached photo. It’s a great way to start a project or plan. Items are organised into…

1 The battery life on your iOS device seems short Firstly, make sure that your software is fully updated by going to Settings > General > Software Update. Then, go to Settings > Battery on your device to check your usage. The easiest solution to reduce the drain on your battery is to go into Low Power Mode (in the Battery section) which disables unnecessary features – background app refresh is disabled, automatic downloads are disabled, screen brightness is turned down, and more. (Note that Low Power Mode is an iPhone-only feature. Go to apple. co/2qZzNaZ for full details.) 2 Your device is slow/ unresponsive… If your device responds sluggishly or freezes up, try to restart it by holding down both the Sleep/Wake button and the Home button until you see the…

IT WILL TAKE 5 minutes YOU WILL LEARN How to use Apple Support to determine your best course of action to resolve a problem with a device YOU’LL NEED iOS 9 or later The app makes the experience of seeking advice quicker and more natural Apple support is legendary within the tech industry, and is widely recognised as the benchmark for customers who need help with products that are important to them. The main Apple Support website (support.apple.com) is cleanly laid out and fairly easy to navigate, but there are still some hurdles to jump if you want to reserve an appointment or get direct help. The Apple Support app for iOS makes this all easier. It detects the specific model of device you’re using and puts it at the top of…

IT WILL TAKE 5 minutes YOU WILL LEARN How to add hyperlinks to email signatures in iOS YOU’LL NEED Pages for iOS, Thunderbird for macOS or Windows Many of us like to include hyperlinked text in our email signatures. Often this will be a link to a website – perhaps for your business – or maybe one for each of your social network accounts. Sadly, the ability to create signatures in iOS’s Mail or Settings apps is limited, and doesn’t allow for hyperlinking text at all. Thankfully, you can use Apple’s Pages app, which is now free for devices running iOS 10 or later, to work around this limitation. The steps below show everything you need for achieving this task. What you can’t do solely with an iOS device, though, is create…

1 Synth selection Finding Alchemy in GarageBand’s revised menu is straightforward. Under the Keyboard section you should see the Synth option now labelled as Alchemy Synth, so tap this to get started. 2 Alchemy’s interface Alchemy opens with a limited keyboard at the bottom (the 12.9-inch iPad Pro can show more keys), and various controls for customising its sounds at the top. 3 Play with keys Like all of GarageBand’s keyboard-based instruments, you sound the synth’s notes by pressing the available keys. Press multiple keys simultaneously to form chords, as you would on a piano. 4 Latch locking Above the fourth and fifth keys you’ll see a Latch button. Slide this right and it handily locks a sequence of notes as you play them, making it easier to then preview…

Your first item Open Mindly – if prompted, choose where to store your document (locally, iCloud or Dropbox). Tap the + button and give your first item a title. Tap the notepad icon to enter a description for your idea. Set colour Tap Color to choose a colour scheme. Tap to select a colour, then tap ‘Define Child Theme’ to determine how additional items will be coloured – see the annotations on the previous page for a more detailed explanation. Add an icon Select the Icon tab to add another distinguishing mark to your item. 15 categories are provided (scroll down) – tap > next to one to view its contents and select one. Tap the tick mark to confirm when you’re done. Add extra items Time to add the first layer…

It has all the tools you expect from a pro image-editing app IT WILL TAKE 15 minutes YOU WILL LEARN How to open and edit images in Affinity Photo YOU’LL NEED iPad Air 2, iPad Pro or iPad 5th-gen, Affinity Photo app Affinity Photo is Serif’s professional-grade image editing application for desktop computers, and its move to iPad is a bit of a big deal. Before now, apps such as Apple’s Photos and Handy Photo from Adva-Soft have been powerful, but have lacked the kind of precision and many of the features we expect from software such as Adobe Photoshop. Affinity Photo has been an award-winning as a Mac app since July 2015, and the iPad app shares the same advanced core technology and tools as it. Getting this sort of app…

IT WILL TAKE 30 minutes YOU WILL LEARN What the options in the Camera & Photos section of Settings do YOU’LL NEED iPad The biggest decision you’ll have to make is whether or not to use iCloud Photo Library The iPad is a terrific tool for shooting video and taking photos, thanks to powerful cameras and a big clear screen. Combine it with a good stand or tripod mount, and maybe an external microphone or lens kit, and you have a brilliant mobile photo and video shooting and editing studio. The latest version of Photos makes sharing photos and videos or turning them into slideshows and albums very easy too. And if you’d rather use a third-party app to shoot or edit photos and videos in a different way, well…

1 Write your signature In Settings > Mail > Signature, type your signature, and select words to apply a bold, italic, or underline style to. Copy the text to the Clipboard, then paste it into a blank Pages document. 2 Add hyperlinks Select a part of your signature you want to hyperlink, then tap Link in the contextual options. Ensure “Link To” is set to Web page, enter an address next to Link, tap Done, and repeat as needed. 3 Set your signature It‘s wise to avoid changing your text’s font – keep it matching the rest of your email contents. Text colour changes are fine, though. Copy and paste your signature back into the box in Settings. 4 Set up Thunderbird Configure your email account in Thunderbird on your Mac: choose…

1 Transform Pad The Transform Pad consists of eight snapshots: Ensemble, Phased, Solo, Pulse, Soft Pad, Stutter, Bounce and Underwater. Drag the box over these to transform sound accordingly. 2 Sound controls The control dials define each snapshot’s sound, and can be tweaked manually. Swipe left to see and adjust: Delay, Cutoff, Reverb, Resonance, Swing, Unison, Stutter, and Vibrato. 3 XY pad controls Swipe further left to find two XY pads. Drag the blue pucks on them to adjust the parameters assigned to their axes: Multimix 1 and 2 on the first, Phaser and Panning on the second.…

If something needs doing right now then do it; if it doesn’t, then defer it or delegate it IT WILL TAKE 30 minutes YOU WILL LEARN How to create projects and tasks in Nirvana’s iPad app YOU’LL NEED iPad, Nirvana, your to-do lists and calendar Do you ever look at your to-do list and just go “mehhhhhhhh”? If you do, you’re probably suffering from that curse of the information age: too much stuff to do. Thankfully there’s a solution, and it’s called Getting Things Done. Getting Things Done (or GTD for short) is a time management system that’s become a really big deal online. It’s a kind of triage for information overload: if something needs done right now and can be done right now then do it; if it doesn’t or…